Monstrous
by archtech88
Summary: Suel, a shape-shifting beast who feeds on fear, finds himself drawn to a human child named Boehm when he attacks her clan. An AU that takes place around Southern France six thousand years ago. As a note, this piece is inspired by both legends of monsters and the movie, so be warned
1. Chapter 1

Suel skittered and crawled over the craggy rocks that dotted the rough landscape with the kind of mindless pursuit that only a predator could bring to light. Being a shifter he had no true form, but the shape that he preferred was that of huge, shaggy beast with curling horns, razor sharp claws and long, thick limbs that ambled with little care over the hard earth beneath it. His mouth slavered and twitched as the rows and rows of knives within awaited the succulent feast of nightmares and fear that came from his chosen prey: man.

He slowed to a crawl as he approached the place where his prey had stopped. They had retreated to a cave that made its home beneath a jutting overhang which had blended into the potted landscape around it. Suel hadn't noticed it until too late and now they took up a guard around the entrance, spears held high and keen eyes searching for anything that might be out of place in the shadow of night.

Suel retreated to speckled boulder near the entrance to the cave and considered changing into something less fierce for a moment, but rejected the thought in the end. He knew that it was was this shape that they had come to fear in the last few weeks and to change form would only serve to weaken both it and their fear for him. No, his best bet would be to creep past the sentries and strike fear into their hearts while they were unaware. It was risky, true, but if he succeeded there would be a veritable feast of fear laid out and he wouldn't need to hunt again for weeks, if not months.

After prowling around the overhang, Suel noticed a small pile of stones that had fallen in front of a slit in the rock face. He stalked over to them in silence as the slightest noise might alert its prey and remove some of its fear. Lesser hunters might consider alerting the wretched things so as to cultivate a more delectable aura of fear, but Suel knew better than that. Men were fearful creatures, it was true, but they were also keen hunters and to alert them in such a manner would make them more dangerous, no matter the fear it generated. Better to remain safe and take in a fulfilling meal than to take unnecessary risks for a slight chance of a feast.

Stone by stone, he unblocked the slit until soon the crack revealed itself in full to him. It little more than two feet across at its largest point and the ends of it quickly tapered off, leaving him only the smallest space to work with. All things considered, Suel wasn't even sure that he would be able to fit through it but given that his options were to squeeze through a crack or to charge at a mass of spear points, he didn't have much choice. He'd spent too much time tracking and influencing this herd to give up now, so in he went.

It wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. It would have been one thing if he just needed to get in, since then he could have hammered at the crack until it burst open. The problem with that approach was that, again, it would have alerted them to his presence. Or at least, it would have set them on edge, which could be just as bad if done improperly. Instead, Suel put his forearms through first and once he was sure that he had a good grip on the wet cave wall within he began to pull his body through.

The most difficult part of the whole process was getting his head and shoulders through. The crack was angled in such a way that he had to twist himself upside down before he was able to start pulling but even with that he had to twist and shimmy as the crack changed direction as it went down deeper into the ground. What made it worse were the occasion rocks and other blockages that he ran into while he worked his way down. More often than not they would be wedged into the rocks so that he had no choice but to pound them out of his way, showering the little tunnel with gravel. Once he was able to get his legs into the tunnel the travel went faster as he was able to propel himself forward and shove against further barriers while his paws gripped the sides of the little hole. He pulled his body forward a couple more feet and was able to see a faint, flickering light ahead of him. He'd reached the cave at last.

The roof of the massive cavern was out of sight and the only indications that Suel hadn't just tunneled back outside was the fact that the 'stars' above and around him shifted positions constantly, falling between patterns and chaotic blobs of light with regularity. As his sight adjusted, Suel began to notice the fields of stalagmites that dotted the floor of the cave and the clutches of stalactites that doted down into view sometimes, both of which were interspersed by pillars that were sometimes as big around as he was long. The floor slopped ever downwards and Suel thought he could hear rushing tides of water off in the distance. Overhead he heard a chattering squeaks and noticed that the air above him was not a solid wall of darkness but was rather the first layer of a veritable swarm of bats and other cave dwellers, all of them crawling over each other and competing for prime spots within the caves.

Suel looked up and saw a crest of rock and mud topped by the little fires that were man's telltale mark. No other beast would intentionally mark out where it was in the dark like that, yet the men had no real reason to be afraid. Any beast that charged them head on would perish unless they either had some sort of aid from within the clan or were powerful enough that a clan of men held no fear for it.

Suel got down on all fours and slunk towards the fires, making certain to leave no strange or distinctive shadows behind him, no matter how dark it was down in the depths of the cave. A couple of time he slipped backwards on the slick mounds of mud that covered the rise in the cave, but each setback was met with a deathly silence on his part as he made sure to not let even the hint of a sound alert his prey before he was ready for them.

As he crested the hill, Suel took a look around to see what his prey had gotten up to since establishing themselves the cave. There were little clusters of fire scattered throughout the entrance cavern surrounded by terrified males, females and younglings, most whom hovered near their mothers. The more decoratively dressed men and women, leaders of the herd from their abundant beads and colored deer pelt coverings, gathered around a large central fire while the poorer dressed ones hovered around the edges.

One pair was quite far from the fire, far from any other members of their herd. The youngling of the pair, a lean, hungry little thing whose pelt looked ragged, tried to wander in closer a couple of times but was shoved away from the fires by the other younglings and females, so it ultimately returned and curled up next to its own mother, who looked much worse. Suel curled up a lip in fury at this show of rejection. It wasn't right to starve a youngling, no matter whose youngling it was. Still, as it wasn't his concern at the moment, he turned his head away from the pitiful pair and found a spot near the edge of the furthest fire and waited for the opportune moment, relaxing as his large, sensitive ears perked up to catch relevant conversation.

"We're pinned like cattle in here. It's just what the demon wants. I saw we go out and hunt it down and kill it once and for all," said a dark haired, broad shouldered male near the central fire. It was covered with beads, eagle feathers and carved bones, indicating a high status in their herd. Suel could sense the passion and lust it drew from the several of the females in the cave and a couple of the other males. He chuckled at its bravado, though, as this male was one of the primary sources of fear in the cave.

"What, and leave the women and children unprotected? It only comes at night, leaving now would just expose them to it," said a lean male with lighter hair and no decorations on his clothes. He had no fear and seemed to be the most alert male in the bunch, yet the other males just laughed. Still, Suel made a note of him. If not for the crack, he would have been correct in his statement.

"Night or day, let him come! I'd like to see him taste my spear," said the broad shouldered male, guffawing at his fearless counterpart. Suel grinned at his statement. If that wasn't a good line to attack at then he didn't know what was.

Suel gave out a ferocious roar and leapt from where he was into a central cluster of fire pits. The light from the fire danced in brilliant patterns across his black fur and the herd erupted in a panic, their fear and panic surging towards Suel. He bared his teeth and snapped at a few of them as they ran, absorbing their fear as they did so. One of the males threw a spear at him, but Suel had taken in enough fear by then that not only was he able to dodge it, but he was in fact able to catch it in his mouth and snap it in half.

He turned to snarl in the direction where the spear had come from and saw the boisterous male from before was the only one without a spear. His eyes were now quite wide and the fear began to radiate from him with more intensity than Suel had ever sensed from any other being he'd ever encountered. The fear in the males around him began to intensify as well as they felt the fear radiate from the boisterous male.

Suel roared and pounced at the boisterous male, his dagger claws fully extended as he slammed into him. There was an audible crunch as he pushed the male to the ground and his fear magnified that much more. The boisterous male's face wrenched up in terror as Suel feasted on the fear that now consumed him and Suel left him as little more than a withered husk once he'd sated himself. He looked up to see that the other males had backed away, leaving him in the center of a ring of spear points. Suel wasn't threatened by them now thought since he could see that their spears trembled in their hands, acting more as totems of protection than things that could hurt him. This left the lean male as the only one who might hurt him, since he alone was unaffected by the chaos unfolding around him. As such, he was the next one that Suel charged.

There was no finesse in what he did; no attempts at amplifying fear. This was animalistic viciousness, pure and simple. The lean male did what he could, jabbing his spear upwards at Suel as he landed on him, but that only served to snap the thing in half as Suel hammered into him. Suel felt the male scrambled beneath him, reaching out for the tip of the broken spear, but he would have none of that. As interesting as the lean male was, letting him survive would only lessen the fear of the others so Suel bent down, opened wide his maw, gripped the lean male's head within it and ripped it off. He reared up and crunched down on it before tossing it aside at one of the other males.

This last show of power was enough to break their spirits and the other males poured out fear to him as they scrambled over one another in their attempts to get away from him lest they be the next to die. Suel roared at them a couple times and chased them a little ways for effect, but for now he was content to just absorb their fear as they ran screaming from the cave before turning his attention on the females and younglings behind him.

The females cowered in front of him as he advanced on them. While the males had a sort of personal fear, the females possessed the double fears of those terrified for both their own lives and the lives of their younglings. Suel advanced slower now, the knowledge that any defenses the herd once possessed were now either discarded or were running in a screaming panic as fast from the cave as possible in the front of his mind.

He wondered which group to attack first for a moment before glancing over at the lean, hungry youngling as it rested with its mother. It felt no fear, not because it was unafraid of him but because it simply had no room for it in competition to its hunger, so Suel turned his eyes on the group that had rejected it and charged.

It made no attempts to kill any of the females or younglings; it just wanted their fear. No sense in killing that which would procreate the next generation. He batted at a few females who made attempts at charge or attacking him, but with them all he had to do was either advance at their younglings or turn to another female and they would run.

Within a few moments, the cave was empty and Suel was sated. This had been a good harvest and he felt that he wouldn't need to hunt again for a few months at least. He went up to the entrance to make sure that no one from the herd had remained behind to make some feeble attempt on his life. When he was certain that the whole herd was running off screaming into the distance, Suel retreated into the cave to rest beside the blazing bonfire at the center of the entrance cavern where the males had been gathered around before.

He settled down to rest, relax and recover after such a large meal when he heard a small sniffling sound come from the corner. He looked up to find that the hungry youngling had remained behind, standing guard over its mother. Suel sighed and got up. It wasn't sporting to use its considerable powers against a lone youngling, but he didn't want to risk the poor thing trying something while he rested.

He prowled up to it to roar and chase it out of the cave when he realized that he couldn't smell anything from the youngling's mother. No fear, no anxiety, nothing. Not even a wisping dream emanated from the female. It was dead.

Suel didn't know if he'd killed it while he fed or if the female had died after falling where it lay now, but that didn't matter. He'd chased off the youngling's herd and without them to protect it the poor little youngling was as good as dead also.

Suel sighed and shook off his bloated, terrifying form and returned to his true body; a sleek, bearlike thing with a stumpy tail and pair of short horns. He went over to the large fire and found a large piece of roasted deer flesh and took it over to the youngling, dropping it in front of her. When she didn't respond, he nudged her with his wet nose until she looked up at him. Her big, green eyes were bloated red from crying and she almost cried out again until she realized that he'd dropped a piece of food in front of her.

She didn't do anything with the meat, terrified at what he might do, so Sual reshaped his snout and throat until it was able to make the same sorts of sounds the males made before.

"Eat," he commanded with a deep and gravelly voice as he experimented with the new shape.

The youngling nodded and began to pick at the food laid down in front of her. It was clear that she was afraid of him still, but hunger soon won over the fear and within moments she was tearing into the meat like she hadn't eaten in days. Suel mused that she probably hadn't as he watched her.

When she'd finally eaten enough that she could eat no more Suel lay down beside her and curled up around her. She dug deep into his warm fur rested. Suel listened to her breath and it wasn't long before her short, desperate breaths gave way to the deep sighs of sleep. Content that his new charge rested, Suel closed his own eyes and joined her in slumber.

* * *

**A/N This was meant to be a one-shot, but the more I wrote it the more I realized that I wanted to learn more about Suel and his youngling charge, so I think that I'm going to keep working on it. I realize that this is very different from the movie, so sorry to anyone who came in here expecting something else but I wasn't sure where else to put it so here it went! Feel free to leave a review if you like it!**

**UPDATE 9 Mar 2014: So I thought that I could just churn this out like I did my last piece, but it turns out that I now feel the drive to do a lot of research and such so that the story is more real. It may take a bit of time to get said research done, though, so bear with me while I dig in!**


	2. Chapter 2

Suel awoke in the morning to the sounds of small, exhausted grunts. He sealed his eyes and ears shut so as to ignore them and return to the blissful unawareness of sleep, but somehow he knew that the little grunts would continue regardless. Even without hearing them, or seeing the light break through, he could sense their push on the air around him. It grew worse the more he tried to drown it out as the air pulsed with the waves of daylight and little patters of sound that made up the morning; the time for sleep was over. Eyes and ears still sealed shut, Suel began to get up.

He yawned, his jaw extending and growing larger as he opened wide his maw. His tongue rolled upwards when it had reached its full extension and his teeth grew out a little, curving slightly and gaining more points as he worked his jaw back and forth the get the stiffness of night out of it. He smacked his lips a couple times and pulled his mouth inwards, his jaws and teeth reforming into their usual shape as he did so, and lurched to his feet.

He rolled his shoulders a couple of times to get the kinks out and then raised his rump high into the air while his head and chest went down to the ground so that his forelegs could stretch out. Once he felt all the strains of the night before get worked out, he leaned forward onto his forelegs and stretched out his hind legs to do the same for them. He rolled his shoulders one more time and shook out each leg individually to loosen them up.

When he finally felt relaxed enough to face the day, Suel reformed his eyes and ears. His eyes were easy enough. With them he'd just pulled his eyes back into his head and closed the eyeholes with a layer of bone slab and skin. Therefore to recreate said eyes, he just opened the eyeholes back up and willed his eyes forward to fit into them.

The ears were the tough ones. When he'd closed them, he'd flattened the external parts of his ears against his skull until they merged with the rest of his skin and sealed up the entrance to his ear canal with a couple pieces of bone. Reversing the process proved more difficult than just undoing what he'd done. Opening up the ear canal was easy enough, to be sure, but the external part of ear proved to be rather important. He tried to just make the shape, a sort of wolf-like thing with the occasional wrinkle here and there, but it seemed that the sounds weren't quite what he was used to. They had an odd echo to them and the little sounds he'd heard before seemed to double when he heard them.

He reared up on his hind legs and stretched out a hand to grab one of the chattering bats from the roof of the cave. It fluttered about in his hand, chattering incessantly as he felt it's ears and changed his own to match. The sounds of the cave amplified and were almost deafening now, so Suel made a note to work out the ears so that the sound was less blazing while he placed the bat back where he'd plucked it from.

He retracted his leg and spent a couple minutes ensuring that it was a match for the other one before he set out towards the noise he'd heard before because it had taken him some time putting this body together. While he was still adapting to it, he intended to make it his primary body for the foreseeable future so he wanted to ensure that he could remember what it was.

His peers tended to shed forms like mortal, mundane beasts shed fur for summer, but Suel thought that constant, regular forms, while dull, meant less energy expended. That in turn meant he didn't need to hunt as often as his flashier peers had to, so there was less risk to him starving in the long run. A three headed, fire breathing dragon was all well and good, but that fire had to come from somewhere and until Suel figured out a practical way to create that sort of thing it was more prudent to just appear vicious and nasty. Besides, a few shadows in the dark and a well placed roar worked just as well most of the time.

Suel shook the dirt out from his matted fur and ambled over to the entrance of the cave, where he found the youngling attempting to carry rocks the size of her head into the cave. He sat down next to a collection of stalagmites at the front of the cave that gave its entrance the appearance of a large, toothy beast and watched her work.

She stumbled every couple of steps as the stones she picked continued to be larger than was practical for her but she never cried out. Even if she dropped one, she'd just pick it back up with a grunt and continue to stagger towards the cave.

Suel grumbled and then surged towards the youngling, shifting his mouth and throat as he did before. "What are you doing?" he tried to ask in a calm, steady tone. What came out was "Wh'r y'o d'ning?" in a low, raspy tone. He clicked his teeth together a couple of times and frowned. He wasn't sure how to make human sounds just yet so he was still experimenting with it, but it seemed that the large teeth he was used to didn't **_cut the mustard._**

The youngling dropped the stone she was carrying and gave out a little shriek when she heard him, then jumped back from where she was and prepared to run from the monstrous sound. When she realized who'd spoken, Suel saw her relax as the tension eased out of her.

"I'm burying my mother. The shaman said that dead people have to be buried in the ground so that they can join the Earth Mother, but I haven't been able to find the right things to dig a good pit, so I'm going to build a mound over her instead. I hope that's ok."

"Join how? Sh'z st'l hrer." Suel asked with another frown. He'd thought that his mouth would work this time, but it seemed that wasn't the case. He prodded his tounge at his protruding fangs and began to reshape his mouth again. He knew that he wouldn't need to speak like this often, but he figured that so long as he was speaking he would do it properly.

The youngling just shuffled her feet, hesitating before speaking. "I don't know, that's why I need to bury her."

Suel stared at her and looked over to the youngling's mother where she lay, now half covered with rocks of various sizes. The female's eyes had a bleak, glassy look to them and her skin was now pail and patchy where the decay had set in. He heaved a heavy sigh and refocused his eyes, forcing his second sight into the fore and looked harder at her.

As before, the most prevalent emotions in the cave came from the youngling, filling the cave with a wash of apprehension, despair, longing and trace amounts of hope. There was a smattering of emotions emanating from the comatose body of the boisterous male, but nothing nearly as strong as what came from the youngling.

When he focused on the dead female, he didn't expect any emotions nor did he see them. What he was looking for now were the slivers of memories that were left behind in dead body. Most emotions surrounding a particularly powerful event curdled into memories. The more powerful a memory was, the higher the chances were that it would remain behind and sink into the well of other memories.

His thoughts were that if anything was to be taken from a dead body, it would be those memories. They didn't have much sustenance in them, but if something was desperate enough, anything would help. It was dangerous though, as the memories would merge with whatever ate them, which is why Suel made a point of avoiding the dead. Still, it seemed that the memories hadn't been tampered with.

"Wh'n?" said Suel when he looked back at the youngling.

The youngling had picked up the rock that she'd dropped and was now amblingly over to where her mother was once again. "When what?" asked the youngling, not glancing over at him at all.

"Wh'n w'll E'rth M'th'r t'k y'rs? Mem'ries 'n spr't r'main," said Suel, snapping his mouth open and closed several times in anger at its refusal to make the right sounds. He padded up to the youngling and once she set her rock down on the pile he grabbed her, spun her around and reached up to examine her mouth. He clamped his fingers on her checks and forced it open and took a look inside.

"Hey!" she cried out, more from surprise than any real fear of him, and jerked away from him, but it was enough.

Suel focused on his mouth and reshaped it to resemble the youngling's and tried to speak again. "When will Earth Mother take yours? Memories and spirit remain." This time it came out in the smooth, sweeping bass that he'd been aiming for and Suel grinned despite himself.

"Why did you do that?' asked the youngling as she narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms.

"Needed your mouth. Sounds were not right. Now, question," prompted Suel, leaning forward on his haunches as he waited for her.

The youngling didn't say anything, instead feeling her mouth and chomping it up and down as if to see if anything was missing from it now that he'd taken her mouth. When he saw her prodding at her checks with her tongue, his shoulders drooped and he put his head down at the foolishness of the youngling.

"Did not steal anything. Borrowed its shape. Now, when will Earth Mother take yours?" asked Suel a second time. He wasn't a naturally patient creature and tried to avoid younglings whenever possible, so this continued delay of a response from the youngling now in his charge was frustrating.

The youngling didn't seem to hear him at first as she continued to prod at her mouth. Suel started to take in a large breath to give a good roar for her attention and had begun to reshape his throat so it would be as loud as possible when she spoke up. "I don't know, but I think it's when I bury her."

"Strange," mused Suel as he looked on at the dead female. It didn't make much sense to him for something to wait for the body to be buried to take its memories, as it would have been easier to just reap the memories while it was still fresh and out of the ground. Burying it would only accelerate the rotting of the very memories this Earth Mother might take.

Still, if appeasing this Earth Mother is what would put the youngling at ease, Suel decided that he would help her finish what she started. He padded to outside the cave and reshaped his forepaws, merging the claws on each hand into massive blades them that he could use to hack out large chunks of earth and then set to work.

The first scrape was by far the hardest for him. It wasn't that it was impossible to get cleave free scraps of earth, since if he wanted to get a better scrape all he needed to do was sharpen his claws into sharper blades and the earth would flow out like butter. No, the main problem he was all of the stones and rocks in the soil. He would start in on a good scrape and all of a sudden a stone would pop out and screw him up.

Nevertheless, he persevered. While the youngling might have been content to just bury her mother under a mound of rocks, Suel felt that if you were supposed to bury someone in the earth then they should be buried in earth, so Suel kept on digging and picking out the rocks he hit.

He didn't intend to dig the youngling's mother a pit to bury her in as it wasn't his place to determine where the female should be buried. He just intended to create a large enough mound of earth for her that scavengers would think twice before they set to work at digging her mother out to eat any lingering memories or ravage her body, as scavengers were wont to do. He didn't intend to do that until the youngling had at least covered up her mother with a respectable amount of rocks, though. No sense in overpowering her.

Near the end of their digging session Suel and the youngling worked out a pretty good system. He would scrap away a few thin strips of dirt, enough to expose any rocks that may pop up and frustrate him, and then the youngling would go in and pluck out the rocks that he'd exposed and take them over to cover her mother. This way she didn't need to wear herself out going further and further out in her quest for rocks and Suel didn't need to worry about being frustrated by them.

As the day went on the pair of them got into the groove of things. Suel would make a few slight pulls of dirt and the youngling would scramble around to find the best rocks for her mother's mound. Often a previously good rock would be discarded in favor a newer rock only for it to be retrieved a moment later and placed somewhere else in the mound. It was slow going and the day was well past noon by the time that the youngling's mother had even a basic covering, but Suel didn't mind.

All too often he prowled around for food and slept for weeks before ambling out to do anything, so it felt good to stretch out and do some real constructive work while he was still buzzing with power. No need to stop, or rest, or hunt down some fleshy beast to supplement the meager needs his body demanded every blue moon, just the thrill of work at a job that needed to be done.

He'd gotten so into their progress that when he looked up at the youngling to see how she faired, he was shocked and dismayed at what he saw. She looked to be near exhaustion, swaying where she stood and stumbling with the rock as she marched to put it with the others on top of her mother. Suel stopped what he was doing and in a few bounding leaps he was behind her to steady her walk. Once he placed his hand on her shoulder, though, she fell back into his arms in a veritable puddle of weariness.

"Rest now. Do not join her yet," said Suel as he pried the rock from the youngling's hands.

"No, I can go like you can," she murmured as she drifted into sleep in his arms.

Suel rolled his eyes, placed the rock on the pile and then went to gather up the earth that he'd dug out. It wasn't much in comparison to what he could have done if he'd pushed himself to dig out a mound worthy of an honored dead, but it would do for now. With the youngling in one arm and the earth in a sling made of his other arm, Suel reshaped his hind legs so that he was no longer a quadruped but rather a biped.

He didn't have man-shaped legs, as he didn't need things like that. Rather, he shaped them to be like the great beasts of the past, massive creatures that would have dwarfed even Suel of which only bones remained. His tail reshaped instinctively and acted as a balance for his new posture as he tromped towards the dead female's burial mound. He draped the earth over it and patted it down, ensuring that the thing would be regarded as nothing more than a part of the cave wall.

Suel glanced down at the youngling, sighed and decided to wait until she awoke again before leaving the cave. She had a right to know where he mother was if she was too tired to remember now. He realized that water dripped from her and mused that while he didn't water that much himself, this might not be the case for man-folk. He glanced deeper into the cave and began to move towards the sound of rushing water.


End file.
